Scroll Down Past the Big Trees :-)

Let’s Fry Some Bad Guys!

Just a brief update that my lung radiofrequency ablation (RFA) procedure is happening tomorrow (Thursday) at noon! I posted the details describing the procedure previously here. Assuming there are no complications like (a pretty rare) collapsed lung (blah blah blah), it will be a single-night hospital stay and I expect to be recovering at home on Friday & back to work on Monday!

I’m VERY EXCITED to be doing this – going on the direct attack! They will be attempting to fry the 2-3 biggest lung tumors with brute force focused heat. This is the picture of the procedure I can’t get out of my head (Warning: this is a dramatization of the actual RFA procedure):

As a very cool side-project, we are going to try to collect enough tumor tissue (pre-fry), to run whole genome sequencing and RNA-sequencing on the lung metastases attempting to make me just about the most genetically profiled CRC patient in the world (!) – a project who’s incredible start I talked about here. I’m excited to share with you the outcome of all of the genetic testing already done (and pending) once the genetic dust settles!

As I mentioned previously – it feels great to be going on the offensive – as every sports team kid knows, playing only defense get old after a while – really old… Time to go thermonuclear on the bastards.

So happy for you! I agree with you that it seems empowering to be the one in an offensive mode this time, instead of always defensive! I love your dramatization! I also picture you with boxing gloves on–giving cancer a big double punch! Anxious to hear about your genetic testing results! You are helping so many of us by leading the way in very thorough genetic testing! You will be in my prayers today!

Thanks Cindie! Yes, in some ways chemo is offensive (ha, no pun intended!) because it hurts the cancer but since it really only tries to contain the cancer/slow it down – it just feels emotionally more of a defensive play (in the case of mCRC) to me than to do something like RFA or surgery to physically remove/destroy – where those particular tumor cells ain’t coming back… The genetics stuff is pretty awesome – please pray they can harvest enough tissue today for the next round of hoped for tests. The Mad Scientist (i.e. me) has a therapeutic idea of where he hopes all this genetic data could lead… that is one of the ultimate finger-crossings I have right now – more on that later (hopefully!) – if that project falls into place (fingers crossed…. now!), that will be a truly awesome blog post down the road… 😉